Interview - Zatorski

David Pollock speaks to one half of Zatorski + Zatorski about their video installation ‘The Last 3600 Seconds of Wasp’.

David Pollock Why do you both refer to yourselves just as Zatorski, and not speak about your relationship?

Zatorski We like the anonymity of it, really. There’s a pair of us, we work together, but otherwise we like the sexlessness and impersonality of referring to ourselves this way.

DP What does this installation involve?

Z It’s about tragedy, it’s a swansong. The video shows a wasp, which many people would swat away without a second thought, lying on its back dying. It’s on a 17th century French plate. There are flowers on this plate, which it looks like the wasp is trying to get some last nutrition from. But they’re fake, they’re not there, they’re not real.

DP What does it all symbolise?

Z At the time my grandfather was dying, and he took a year to wither away in a hospice. Death is like birth. Once the process begins, it’s an unstoppable machine. Referring back to the flowers which aren’t there, it’s about belief, it’s a theological discussion. My grandfather was a Catholic who became an atheist and went back to Catholicism. He had far too long to think about dying, really, and so does this wasp.

DP Is it a dramatic piece?

Z Absolutely, in the sense that we’re laughing in the face of death. We use a huge Philip Glass score for a tiny insect. It’s quite absurd, really.

Video installation by British artist duo ZATORSKI + ZATORSKI. Carefully choreographed to an emotive Philip Glass score, the demise of this small creature is melodramatised and infused with a surrealist celebration of the absurd.'Part of Glasgow international 2008'